It’s the middle of July and I really want a holiday and lightness. I leave the most serious topics for the autumn and I remain on the subject of “pleasure”, the topic for the next course on September 16 (link will follow shortly!).
This weekend I was in my beloved Green Valley and I had a beautiful bath at the Cavallero. The Cavallero is a creek that is located in my hometown, Coggiola, where the Rio Cavallero – which flows down from Monte Barone – meets the Sessera river.
When we were children we used to go there with our mom, when we were teenagers we used to go there alone with the bike, then with the scooter, then to make bonfires and barbecues. I have memories of that place from my year 5 to today.
Especially in the last 12 years that I live in Veneto, my need for a bath at the Cavallero has increased, and in the absence of an entire afternoon to spend there, I always take that hour towards evening, when there is no longer anyone. I arrive on foot, in the middle of nature, the sound of the water flowing, which helps to let go. Every time I arrive at the puddle I stop, I look at the stones and decide where to go, where to take off my clothes. I always look at it as if it were the first time, and I enjoy that little wait in which I put on my swimsuit. Then, step by step I enter the water, being careful not to slip on the stones that are often covered with a thin slime. As I put my feet in the water – almost always cold – I smile, a joy rises in my heart, a strong desire to enter and at the same time to take it easy and then enjoy the most beautiful moment: when I let myself go into the fresh water and put my head inside!
That water is not salty as the sea water, it is not as sweet as the lake one. It’s fresh water, alive, full of oxygen. After a few moments my body gets used to the temperature and I go back and forth in that blade like a child. Then I go out on the other side, climb on the big stones, sit and enjoy the last rays of sunshine, put my feet in the little waterfall. When I go out I dry myself in the sun, on the stones, so that I am left with the taste of water and the taste of warm stones.
On Saturday my mum was with me, and seeing the way she looked at me, seeing the joy in her eyes, seeing that her daughter at 43 years old still feels so much joy in bathing in the puddle, I realized how happy I am!
For me happiness is beautiful when it is shared, but why am I telling you this?
I’m telling it to make you feel how I feel, how it is for me to bathe in fresh water.
Maybe it doesn’t taste the same for you, so I invite you to find something you like and try to describe it. A page, handwritten or computer written, where while you’re writing you connect with that pleasure there, that feeling. Can you describe it in words?
